“As close as I get to having a religious experience through music,” is how Thomas Gould has described playing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. The lanky, long-haired violinist has become a familiar figure ...

Founded in 1920 by A H Fox Strangways, Music and Letters is long established as the leading British journal of musical scholarship. Its coverage embraces all fields of musical enquiry, from the ...

Violinist-composer Franz Clement (1780-1842) has been portrayed in the past as something of a charlatan, an empty virtuoso not noted for his musical depth. Clement, as concertmaster of the Theater an ...

Beethoven laboured over this piece for nearly 10 years and its 1806 premiere was a flop. Forgotten during the rest of his life now it's a celebrated work full of big tunes and bigger demands of the ...